Absconded queen?

[jbr]

I have had my new nuc of bees installed for just over a month now. The new frames are being drawn out, there seems to be plenty of stores and I put a super on last week.
Last weeks inspection found no queen, but plenty of capped and uncapped brood. I have just inspected today and have found no uncapped brood and no eggs, so the queen has gone for a holiday. I don't recognise that she's taken any other bees with her as the hive seems just as full now as it did before.
There are four capped queen cells and one uncapped cell. Should I just leave them to it and let the colony work it out for themselves, or should I do something about it myself, order a queen perhaps?
The temperment of the colony is quite placid, will this trait continue if I let them get on with it themselves?

 

[BKF Admin]

Was she clipped ?

It sounds like they swarmed with a clipped queen.
The bees will return after an hour or so but the queen is lost in the grass.
The Q cells are a giveaway.

 

[jon]

It sounds like the colony has swarmed. If the queen was clipped, you just lost the queen, if it wasn't, you probably lost the queen and half of the bees. I would reduce the queen cells to one. If the open one has a larva in it I would chose that.

if you leave all the queen cells you will probably lose a couple more cast swarms.

 

[jbr]

Thanks, the open cell doesn't have anything in it, so how should I go about choosing which queen cell to keep? Pot luck perhaps!?

 

[jbr]

How about using the multi-Q cell to create a new nuc? Is it just as simple as removing a frame with a Q-cell and placing this into a 2nd hive, and leaving the origional hive alone?